The holiday season always shines with a glut of glitz and glamor and so it is with the controversial new trailer for “Star Trek: Section 31,” Paramount+’s first direct-to-streaming “Star Trek” film landing on Jan. 24, 2025 that’s causing a minor riot of grumbling gravitational waves flowing across the internet.
It’s a bit jarring, unapologetically brash, somewhat scary, and certainly bold enough to stir up debates on whether or not this is truly “Star Trek.” Regardless of which side of the galaxy you fall on, no soul can honestly say that this movie and its PG-13-level violence looks boring.
“Section 31” centers around Starfleet’s secretive black-ops division and the unstable character of Philippa Georgiou (Michelle Yeoh) who was presented as the Emperor of the Terran Empire in “Star Trek: Discovery’s” mirror universe. Here she’s trapped back in the prime universe’s 23rd century where the cruel leader is recruited into Section 31’s covert organization where she wreaks havoc on threats to the United Federation of Planets while atoning for the many sins of her past. (If you need a refresher on your Georgiou lore, our Star Trek streaming guide can help you catch up.)
This wild new preview and character poster were delivered over the weekend during the Paramount+ presentation at the CCXP convention in São Paolo, Brazil. We’re given a much better idea of the film’s chaotic tone and style here as the vile Emperor Georgiou is yanked from her decadent space station to hook up with Starfleet’s spy team tasked with confronting “a threat unlike anything Starfleet has ever seen.”
Written by screenwriter Craig Sweeny and directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, the risky “Star Trek: Section 31” is illuminated by an all-star cast that also includes Omari Hardwick (“Power”), Kacey Rohl (“Hannibal”), Emmy-winner Sam Richardson (“Ted Lasso”), Sven Ruygrok (“One Piece”), Robert Kazinsky (“Pacific Rim”), Humberly Gonzalez (“Ginny & Georgia”), James Hiroyuki Liao (“Barry”) and Miku Martineau (“Kate”) as a younger Philippa Georgiou.
“The concept is almost antagonistic to some of the values of ‘Star Trek,'” Sweeny told Variety in an interview earlier this year. “Famously, there’s a spot for everybody in Roddenberry’s utopia, so I was like, ‘Well, who would be the people who don’t quite fit in?’ I didn’t want to make the John le Carré version, where you’re in the headquarters and it’s backbiting and shades of gray. I wanted to do the people who were at the edges, out in the field. These are not people who necessarily work together the way you would see on a ‘Star Trek’ bridge.”
Osunsanmi (“Star Trek: Discovery,” “Short Treks”) acts as executive producer alongside scribe Craig Sweeny, CBS Studios, Roddenberry Entertainment, and Alex Kurtzman’s production shingle, Secret Hideout.
“Star Trek: Section 31” arrives exclusively on Paramount+ on Jan. 24, 2025.